He found himself, as ever, on the edge of words | As a child, he’d had a small tin globe, still pink with empire, but there was yellow and turquoise. The two hemispheres, north and south, could be separated along a gripped and twisted equator, and turned into bowls of silver on the inside, a planet on the outside, decorated as if the colourful design on a Montgolfier balloon had slipped and drifted awry.

For some reason, the globe had been removed from its plastic axis, dismantled, and was being stored at the bottom of a wardrobe, a world of obscurity, scented with camphor | His memory wasn’t clear, there were also the nettles, the sheds, the apple trees | A lake, very calm and still, she thought it might be from a film: it seemed so peaceful, as if it had accepted, without regret, all of its drownings.

Placed into storage, objects enter a voyage-like state, an abeyance of locality, which, from the human side of things at least, belongs to the unseen, the untouched, the forgotten. Such objects are set outside the benevolent maze of our consciousness, and can’t even be said to be lost. Entirely without thought — is this a sad fate? | She hurried to finish the day’s entry in her journal. She was fascinated by the words brocade and damascene, although her reflections that evening were focused on bereavement and perfection.

 

 

from the series construct (2012–present, ongoing)